Voles
by bikelock28
Summary: Two unrelated one-shots in which Rory and River ruminate on the nature of love.
1. Rory

**Voles**

 **Here's two unrelated one-shots from in which Rory and River both consider the nature of love. Hope you enjoy.**

Rory

Sacrificing yourself for the love of your life was never supposed to be boring. When film heroes do something crazy and difficult for the love of their life it looks cool, sexy and exciting, usually involving leaping front of a gunman or dashing through an airport. Just Rory Williams' luck then, that the grand heroic gesture he's doing for the love of his life is waiting outside a box in the cold and the wet, day after day after day.

"Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah". Mum likes that song; Dad hates it, reckons it's dreary and overplayed. Rory's never had much of an opinion, although now he's come to realise that that particular lyric is wrong. A cold and broken Hallelujah sounds dramatic. A cold and broken Hallelujah as the hero kneels over his sweetheart's lifeless body. A cold and broken Hallelujah as an elderly couple cling to each other, dying of cold in the bed they've slept in for fifty years. A cold and broken Hallelujah as a child coughs out his dying words in his father's arms. Tragic and bleak and dramatic. But love isn't like that. Love is boring. Rory Williams is bored. Guarding the Pandorica, sitting or standing beside it, watching the world pass for days and weeks and centuries. Stiff shoulders, wet feet, numb bum. Lonely and exhausted and so. Flipping. Bored.

Back in Leadworth, when he was human and a teenager, Rory had worked in the village greasy spoon. It was called Splendour Cafe, although it was hardly splendorous. Rory's shift was seven in the morning until four in the afternoon on a Saturday, and eight until three on a Sunday. The cafe had plenty of regulars, but there's two whom Rory thinks of now. First, a lad a couple of years younger than Rory who would be there every Saturday early lunchtime with his grandmother. She was in a wheelchair and had a tremor and as far as Rory could tell she didn't have much eyesight. The boy, who Rory vaguely recognised from school and reckoned was called Rowan, would push the door open, kick the doorstop under it so it didn't shut, use the pedal on the back of the wheelchair to tip the chair up over the step, push the wheelchair inside, shut the door, re-arranging the seats at a table so there was enough room for the wheelchair to fit in, flick the brakes on, then sit down himself. Rowan would read the menu slowly to his Grandma and help her decide what she wanted. He'd come up to the till, order for her and for himself, ask for a straw in his Grandmother's tea, sit back down and talk patiently to the old lady while they waited for their lunch. When it came, he'd immediately cut her food up. The old lady sometimes didn't want to feed herself so Rowan would do it for her.

Then there was the mum. Rory should have caught her name, but he never did, so she was The Mum. The Mum had two kids, whose names Rory did know- Myla was a baby and Leo was three or four. He was different to other kids- Asperger's perhaps, or that disorder where it took you longer to process sound. The Mum would be at Splendour Cafe every Sunday morning with the baby in the pram and the little boy tottering along in front. For a few months his mother had to have him on reigns because he'd run away. He'd always want the same thing from the menu; chicken nuggets and chips with mayo but no ketchup. A few times Rory would see The Mum take the plate then rearrange the food into a position Leo liked. After a while Rory learnt what it was supposed to look like and would put the food in the correct positions before he served it. Sometimes Leo would be having a bad day, and everybody would know about it. He'd thrash and scream, a lethal noise, and his mother would have to grip his little fists and hold them behind his back like she was restraining a wrestler, not a child barely out of nappies.

Rowan and The Mum had boring jobs. Long, repetitive. Embarrassing occasionally, when Leo kicked off or Grandma barked orders loudly at Rowan. Grandma always said thank you to Rowan for taking her out, but Leo was too young to understand how much of a hassle it all was for his mum, so on top of tedious, long and repetitive, her work was thankless. Maybe she'd signed up for it? Okay, not exactly having a kid like Leo, but she'd presumably wanted her kids. But Rowan hadn't chosen this Grandma, he'd inherited that situation, like everybody inherits the difficult, annoying or complicated older generations of their families. But you don't choose who you fall in love with either? Rory hadn't chosen to fall in love with a woman who's locked in a box for two thousand years, but here is anyway, dripping with rain and going out of his mind with boredom. Love is not a victory march. Love is long, repetitive, at times embarrassing. Love is boring.

Rory Williams has another seventeen hundred years of being bored.


	2. River

River

River Song's husband isn't what you'd call a great lover. He isn't _bad_ in bed but he's not especially good either. The problem is he panics; he gets flustered and indecisive, and God he talks too much. _Far_ too much. River will admit to having a mouth on her but she knows to shut up during sex. The Doctor will prattle on about androids and Marco Polo and Neptunian tennis, so much so that on a few occasions River's had to yank his hair and remind him that he's meant to be focussed on _her._ He doesn't _enjoy_ sex like she does, River knows. It doesn't repulse him, but he's considerably more ambivalent than most other people. It's different for Time Lords- despite her absorption of the TARDIS, River is still partly human, and a human daughter of Amy Pond at that. So their sex drives are disbalanced, plus there's the fact that in this body he hasn't had much experience, nor is he particularly up for experimentation. He doesn't like anything involving pain, he's not confident enough to enjoy being a dominant but too jittery to be tied up himself. So usually it's vanilla sex during which he'll fumble and chatter and repeatedly ask, "Umm, is this okay?".

Romance is hardly the Doctor's strong point either. When she was younger River had attempted to entice him into going on dates; restaurants, museums, moonlit strolls around 1930s Mfantsiman. But inevitably he'd career off to meet Paa Grant. In museums he'd skulk after her like a bored child, grumbling, "But what's the point? We're _time-travellers,"_ or he'd work himself into hysterics laughing at mistakes. At the restaurant table he'd spill his drink and knock his elbow into the butterdish. River has learnt a few knacks that work for dates; the Doctor's always up for the theatre or a concert. He can't dance for toffee but he enjoys it, so sometimes they'll go to an Ute Bear Dance in the 12th century or to an 80s rave. Picnics or star-gazing work too. She's accepted now though, that their most romantic moments will always be in the heat of danger. Kisses before they run off in different directions while a fortress collapses behind them, "I love you"s declared only when there's a revolver against their heads. He gets fidgety when he cuddles her in bed, but leave them on a bare cell floor for the night and he'll give her his jacket, let her use his chest as a pillow, and play with her hair while she sleeps. He's at his sweetest when there's no pressure on him to be. He'll blurt out something daft and perhaps there'll be a compliment lurking somewhere in it, which the Doctor may or may not have realised is there.

River's learnt a few ideas about sex too. If he hasn't seen her for a while (yet another complicating factor) she'll have to go slowly; get him used to being touched by her again even if it's only linking arms or drumming her fingers on his knee at first. He likes _a lot_ of kissing before anything goes below-waist; it warms him up and calm him down. Having a bath together works too and, perhaps oddly, so does having sex when he's tired; he'll be much more inclined to spend an hour in bed with her if it's late and they've already done their day's adventuring. That way he doesn't feel like he's missing anything. Of course, River still fantasises about him crashing the TARDIS into her cell, grabbing her and going at it fast and rough bent over her desk, but realistically that's not going to happen. Often a blundering, awkward shag is the best he can give her. Some days he'll kiss her for hours but nothing more. Sometimes she knows that he knows that she wants to go further but she can see him getting uncomfortable so she doesn't push it. That's not love, is it? Love is accepting that that's how he is. And God, River is in love with that man. Irretrievably. Madly. Utterly head-over-high-heels. The effect he has on her is embarrassing and she thanks God she learnt so young to lock her hearts away and not tell anybody where the key's hidden.

"Aha! Knew I had it somewhere!" comes a triumphant yelp from the corridor. The Doctor appears, beaming and carrying what looks like a pile of blankets, and with a couple of beaded necklaces strewn around his neck. He trots down the TARDIS stairs, hurls a blanket at River and crows, "See, I knew this necklace was Muwaan Mat's. Well, one of them is, I think the other was her sister's. Or her mum's. Maybe her brother's". He holds each necklace up to inspect, then shrugs, "Well, one of them anyway. River? Are you ready?"

So he's not much of a lover and hardly a romantic. He's pasty, bumbling and co-ordinationally challenged. He's got the face and body hair of a twelve-year old, the dress sense of a seventy-year-old toff and the hair of, X But the way he's looking at her, bouncing on the toes of his battered boots, rubbing his hands with glee and flicking his ridiculous hair out of his face while he grins at her, River doesn't care. He's hers and, he loves her, and she loves him. She stands up, crosses over to him and takes his hand. They walk outside together.

"Always".

 **Thank you for reading, please review. PS- Soz Matt, I'm sure irl you're great in bed ;)**


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